About Analytica China

Analytica China

Analytica China is Asia's largest trade fair for laboratory technology, analysis, diagnostics and biotechnology, held biennially at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre and organised by Messe München as the Chinese edition of Munich's analytica. Its inaugural Shanghai edition in 2002 was analytica's first international spin-off, preceding the launches in India (2003) and Vietnam (2009), and it has since grown from about 300 exhibitors in 2004 to 1,273 exhibitors with 45,538 visitors in 2023. The 13th edition, branded analytica Shanghai and held from 16 to 18 November 2026, spans about 85,000 square metres with over 1,100 exhibitors from 23 countries and regions across eight themed zones covering the full laboratory value chain. Alongside the exhibition, the analytica China Conference and the Labtech China Congress give the fair a scientific and laboratory-planning programme that distinguishes it from equipment-only shows. For laboratory professionals across Asia, it is the principal marketplace and meeting point of the analytical industry.

Origins: Munich 1968 and the First Spin-Off in 2002

The analytica brand began in Munich in 1968, when the first “ANALYTICA — International Specialist Exhibition for Biochemical Analysis” brought 5,000 visitors from 24 countries and 90 exhibitors from ten European countries to 5,000 square metres at Munich's Theresienwiese grounds, at a time when many laboratory devices still had analogue displays. Held every two years, the Munich fair grew steadily — 9,400 visitors four years after launch and approaching 20,000 by 1978 — tracking the laboratory industry's revolutions in gene and protein analysis in the 1980s and miniaturisation, automation and laboratory information management systems in the 1990s. When Messe München began tapping international growth markets, China came first: the Shanghai spin-off launched in 2002 was analytica's first international edition, followed by India in 2003 (Mumbai) and Vietnam in 2009 (Hanoi), with South Africa (Johannesburg) joining the network in 2019. That analytica China was chosen as the network's pioneer spin-off reflected the scale and growth of China's laboratory market at the start of the century — a judgement the Shanghai show's subsequent two decades have vindicated.

Organiser: Messe München and the Analytica Network

Analytica China is organised by Messe München, one of the world's leading trade fair companies, through its Shanghai operation. The fair sits within the international analytica cluster — Munich, China, India (with India Lab Expo), Vietnam, South Africa and the United States — and Messe München's exhibition directors present the network as a single global laboratory platform whose local editions adapt to regional priorities: in China, the digital, intelligent laboratory of the future plays the biggest role, while Vietnam emphasises food and quality control. In 2023 all five international analytica fairs registered visitor numbers surpassing their previous events, with analytica China's 1,273 exhibitors and 45,538 visitors the largest figures in the network's overseas portfolio. Messe München's leadership has repeatedly framed the Shanghai show as proof of the Chinese market's dynamism: Deputy CEO Reinhard Pfeiffer noted in 2014 that analytica China could top even the Munich edition's growth figures, and in 2020 he called the Shanghai show “a sign of a new impulse after the crisis.” The organiser co-produces the conference programme with Chinese scientific partners including the Chinese Chemical Society, embedding the fair in China's analytical-science community.

Growth Through the Editions: 2004 to 2016

The Shanghai show's edition record shows continuous, sometimes record-breaking growth. From about 300 exhibitors in 2004, it reached its tenth anniversary in 2012 with 580 leading exhibitors on 25,000 square metres — a 24 percent exhibitor increase and a new record — and 16,940 professional visitors and buyers from 66 countries, alongside 14 academic programmes with 150 speakers and 2,509 attendees. The 7th edition in 2014 set further records: 695 exhibitors from 29 countries — up 20 percent on 2012 — on over 30,000 square metres across three halls (N1, N2 and N3), with 18,775 business professionals from 62 countries and about 2,360 conference participants across 13 high-profile conferences organised with the Chinese Chemical Society, including the 7th Shanghai International Symposium on Analytical Chemistry and the Shanghai Sino-EU International Forum on Food Safety. The 8th edition, closing on 12 October 2016, covered 35,000 square metres — up 17 percent — and drew 24,582 professional visitors including those of the concurrently held China Brew China Beverage fair, an increase of 31 percent on 2014; Messe München described it as a historical breakthrough in space, exhibitor and visitor numbers that reaffirmed the show's leading position in China.

The Pandemic-Era and Recent Editions

The 2018 edition hosted 950 exhibitors on 46,000 square metres. The 10th edition, analytica China 2020, concluded on 18 November 2020 at SNIEC as one of the year's significant industry gatherings: 1,009 exhibitors plus 112 represented companies and partners, 23,652 professional visitors, six exhibition halls and eight special areas on over 60,000 square metres, presenting more than 1,000 new instruments, technologies and solutions. Its highlight was the 2,000-square-metre “Live Lab” and Clinical Lab demonstration space — including a 750-square-metre life-science laboratory built by WALDNER, Suzhou Daxpro and Shanghai UFU — which let visitors watch a working laboratory rather than static instruments. Coming in the pandemic year and marking the brand's 19th year in the Chinese market, the 2020 show was presented by Messe München as an upgraded platform for learning and exchange at a moment of crisis and opportunity. Growth resumed thereafter: the 2023 edition reached 1,273 exhibitors and 45,538 visitors, the largest figures in the fair's history to that point, and the 13th edition in November 2026 — rebranded analytica Shanghai — spans about 85,000 square metres with over 1,100 exhibitors from 23 countries and regions.

Venue: Shanghai New International Expo Centre

Analytica China is held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC) in Pudong, whose halls have accommodated the fair's expansion from three halls in 2014 to six halls in 2020 and a footprint of about 85,000 square metres by 2026. The venue's scale matters for a fair whose signature features — the Live Lab demonstration laboratory of over 2,000 square metres, national pavilions such as the Taiwan Pavilion that joined for the first time in 2014 with twelve companies organised by the Kaohsiung Instruments Commercial Association, and eight themed zones — require contiguous, flexible space. Shanghai's position as China's commercial capital and a concentration of pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food-safety and environmental-testing demand makes it the natural home: the exhibitors' customers — laboratories in industry, universities, hospitals and government institutes — are densely distributed across the Yangtze River Delta. The fair's biennial November timing in recent editions complements the Munich parent's spring cycle, giving global exhibitors two anchor laboratory events in alternating years. Within SNIEC's calendar, analytica China is one of the anchor scientific-instrument events, drawing a specialist professional audience distinct from the venue's industrial mega-shows.

Exhibition Zones: The Full Laboratory Value Chain

The fair's content covers the full laboratory value chain. Its long-established exhibition areas are Analysis and Quality Control, Laboratory Technology, and Biotechnology and Life Sciences, presenting applications in food safety, environmental analysis, biotechnology, science, education and public health. The 13th edition organises its roughly 85,000 square metres into eight themed zones covering analytical instruments, laboratory design and construction, automation and digitalisation, life sciences, biotechnology and diagnostics, among others. The exhibitor roster spans the global analytical industry's leadership — companies of the standing of Agilent, Bruker, Eppendorf, Metrohm, PerkinElmer, Shimadzu, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Waters are characteristic of the analytica brand's exhibitor community — alongside a large and growing Chinese instrument sector. The Live Lab concept, expanded in 2020 with the Clinical Lab, embodies the fair's distinctive approach: complete laboratory workflows demonstrated live, from sample preparation to data evaluation, so that buyers assess systems rather than components. Special areas and more than 100 seminars in recent editions add application training to the product display, and the emphasis on the digital, intelligent laboratory — automation, connectivity and data management — reflects what Messe München identifies as the Chinese market's defining priority.

Conferences: Analytica China Conference and Labtech China Congress

The accompanying programme has been a hallmark since the early editions. In 2012, 14 high-quality academic programmes brought 150 speakers and 2,509 audience members to discuss analytical chemistry, proteomics, food safety, chromatography and laboratory certification, in cooperation with partners including the Chinese Chemical Society (CCS), the China Human Proteome Organization, the Shanghai Society of Food Science and a Sino-German cooperation research group for separation and analysis of complex samples. The 2014 conference programme comprised 13 conferences — among them the 7th Shanghai International Symposium on Analytical Chemistry, the Shanghai Sino-EU International Forum on Food Safety, a symposium on personalised treatment, the LSAC Forum and the International Conference on Functional Materials — attracting about 2,360 participants. The Labtech China Congress, developed alongside the fair, addresses the laboratory itself: planning, construction, management and services, with a focus on lab safety, intelligence and sustainable development and on the harmonious relationship between people and laboratories; the 2016 edition even staged a first “Lab Safety Show.” Together, the analytica China Conference and Labtech China Congress give the event two complementary knowledge tracks — analytical science and laboratory infrastructure — that few rival fairs replicate.

Visitors and the Chinese Laboratory Market

The fair's visitor profile is professional, scientific and international: 16,940 visitors from 66 countries in 2012, 18,775 from 62 countries in 2014, 24,582 in 2016, 23,652 in the disrupted 2020 edition and 45,538 in 2023. Instrument users, scientists and researchers form the core audience, joined by laboratory managers, procurement specialists and distributors. Messe München attributes the show's growth directly to the prosperous Chinese market: China's investment in research, pharmaceuticals, food safety, environmental monitoring and clinical diagnostics has expanded laboratory capacity continuously since 2002, and analytica China has grown with it — from around 300 exhibitors in 2004 to over 1,100–1,273 in its recent editions, a more than fourfold increase. The fair serves as the Asian meeting point where global instrument makers launch products for the region — over 1,000 new products were presented in 2020 alone — and where Chinese laboratories benchmark domestic against imported technology. Its standing as Asia's largest laboratory fair means that for many international companies it is the single indispensable event for the region, and for Chinese exhibitors it is the home showcase from which regional exports are built.

Significance: Asia's Laboratory Marketplace

Analytica China's significance rests on three foundations: it is the largest laboratory trade fair in Asia; it was the first international spin-off of the world's leading laboratory fair brand, launched in Shanghai in 2002 ahead of India and Vietnam; and it has maintained biennial growth across more than two decades, from 300 exhibitors in 2004 to 1,273 exhibitors and 85,000 square metres by its 13th edition. Within the analytica worldwide network it is the flagship overseas edition, and Messe München's own reporting treats its records as evidence for the whole industry's health. The fair's combination of exhibition, live laboratory demonstrations, analytical-science conferences and laboratory-design congress makes it a complete professional ecosystem rather than a product market alone. As a WorldNM event profile, analytica China illustrates how a European scientific fair brand, localised early and grown patiently with Chinese scientific partners such as the Chinese Chemical Society, can become the defining institution of its sector in Asia — the place where the region's laboratories decide what to buy, what to build and how to work.